Guilty plea in child porn case

A 41-year-old man from Marmora will be sentenced in December after pleading guilty to several charges, including child pornography and sexual interference.
The man’s named will not be released due to a court-imposed publication ban put in place to protect the identity of the victim.
The man, who is in custody, pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of making child pornography, one count of possessing child pornography, one count of sexual interference and one count of voyeurism.
Hastings County Crown attorney Lee Burgess told Justice Stephen Hunter the incidents date back to January 2005.
Court heard that in February of this year, the man lent a CD to one of his friends. The friend believed the disc to contain adult pornography but, once viewed, realized some of the images were of children.
The friend also recognized the hand of the man in some of the images.
When asked about the images, the man told his friend to destroy the disk and not to “rat him out,” Burgess said.
Some of the images were of the man’s young niece.
Police were eventually contacted and the man was arrested on March 23. In an interview with police, the man acknowledged his hand was in the photos touching the girl who was between the ages of 11 and 13-years-old when the offences occurred.
The man, Burgess said, would move the girl’s underwear and take photos of her while she was sleeping.
Police later learned the man made recordings of several other people including various babysitters. He had, at one point, also set up a camera in the bathroom of a residence and filmed people as they used the bathroom.
During a search of the man’s home, police seized a large number of computers but the majority of them were “not contaminated with pornography.”
One computer, however, had 345 images and three videos of child pornography stored on the hard drive. Another computer had 140 images on it.
The images were a mixture of those created by the man and others obtained from elsewhere.
Burgess noted, although it doesn’t constitute a criminal offence, a bookshelf in the man’s home where children also resided was “filled with adult pornography.”
The man’s lawyer, Jason Easton, said his client stated pornography found on the second computer was downloaded by a friend, but he did acknowledge he made no attempt to delete those images and was able to access them.
Justice Hunter has ordered a sexual offender and pre-sentence report.
Sentencing has been set for Dec. 16.
EMountney@Postmedia.com